1969 Dodge Dart Swinger 340 - Dart Games, Revisited

Veteran readers know the story, but for the benefit of those who have arrived after 1985, it's a tale of restoring a Dodge Swinger two times over. It all started innocently enough with a magazine attempt at the time-honored technique of bartering. In the back pages of the July 1983 issue of Car Craft, we offered a used aluminum connecting rod up for trade. A few months later, we had horse-traded up to a Muncie four-speed that Stick Only rebuilt, which we then offered up for a best-offer swap. That's when Coralville, Iowa, reader Tom Toycen offered to trade us his '69 Dodge 340 Dart. We actually tried to convince him to wait until the trade got better, but his mind was made up. He wanted to trade, so we obliged him. Mopar aficionado Roland Osborn offered to transport the 340-powered Swinger to Los Angeles, and within a few short weeks, a Bright Poly Blue A-body with a Swinger 340 bumblebee stripe was sitting in my driveway. I swept out the wasp nests and rat droppings, changed the carburetor to a Carburetor Shop 650 Holley, messed with the Mallory ignition for a time, and actually fired the small-block. After some further rough tuning, I decided a drag test was in order before disassembling the Swinger for its complete restoration and subsequent giveaway at the Street Machine Nationals. I barely got out of the driveway for one last road test when the engine began clanking badly and was suffering from at least one dead cylinder. I removed the driver-side valve cover and discovered a broken aluminum(!) valvespring retainer, and further inspection revealed at least three more that were badly cracked. That ended our drag-test plans.

The plan for the Swinger was to have Randy Gerstenberg and his company at the time, the 'Cuda Connection, completely restore the Swinger, and then we planned to give it away at the upcoming Street Machine Nationals. We also delivered the wounded 340 to NHRA racer and engine specialist Bob Lambeck for a complete rebuild. A few days later, Bob called me to come over to the shop to discuss the engine buildup. When I got there, he had a piston sitting on his desk with a broken valve turned sideways and shoved right through the top of the piston—the victim of our dropped valve. "If you don't mind, I'm keeping this," Lambeck said. "It's pretty cool."

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Over the next eight months, CC documented the Swinger's progress with the finale in the Aug. 1985 issue. This was the year that the Street Machine Nationals made its ill-fated move to East St. Louis, Illinois. Those who attended will remember how badly that event went down, which was made even worse by the intense heat and a traffic jam that would make a veteran Los Angeles driver wince. Of course, the Swinger was required to appear, since it was the Grand Prize giveaway, yet handcuffing it to a trailer or a transport rig just seemed wrong. In remembering this part of the story, there is some contention about who "volunteered" to drive the Swinger out to the Midwest. In Car Craft Technical Editor Chuck Hanson's recap story, I apparently jumped ship on co-driving, claiming it had something to do with the fact that my premature-born daughter, Amber, had only recently arrived home after a lengthy stay in the hospital. To put all this in perspective, Amber is now 28 years old. My bail-out was fortunate for me, as I missed out on Chuck's near-doomed cross-country adventure. Somewhere in the mountains north of Las Vegas, the rebuilt automatic exploded in spectacular fashion, breaking the trans case and spitting the starter motor out onto the steering linkage. "It was about 2 a.m. when the trans broke," Chuck now recalls. "So I just crawled in the back seat and slept in the car that night. The next morning, I hitchhiked into Gypsum, Colorado, to get help. I remember that the tow from there to Denver was 120 miles. The trans shop had trouble finding an 727 replacement, and I spent two or three days in Denver." Fortunately, the trans shop owner was a Car Craft reader, and true to his word, he had Chuck back on the road in time to make the show—just barely. Of course, all that extra time he had built into the trip to see the sights and enjoy the solace behind the wheel evaporated in that cloud of white ATF smoke when the trans blew up. Chuck had to then perform the classic banzai trip across seven states to make it to East St. Louis in time for the show. Chuck claims now, "I harbor no permanent grudge over that whole escapade. I think I only hung onto that for two or three years." After arriving at the Nationals, Chuck caught up on his sleep and original owner Tom Toycen handed the keys over to the Grand Prize winners Scott and Denise Walton of Quincy, Illinois.

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After the Dart found a new home, magazine deadlines and the threat of further broken parts prevented us from keeping track of the Swinger, and the trail went cold, until a few months before the return of the Street Machine Nationals in Du Quoin, Illinois, in early July 2013. That's when I received an email from Jim Shepard of Edwardsville, Illinois, who proclaimed that he was just finishing the restoration of the Dart Games Swinger, and he planned to bring it to Du Quoin so we could see the car again. On Friday morning, I was reunited with the Swinger for the first time in 28 years, and it was like time had stood still—at least for the Dart. Jim and his son, Jimmy, drove the Dart down from Edwardsville, Illinois, and it looked as good as the day we gave it away. Of course, it has been through a few owners and more than a little abuse, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the car today. Think about this for a minute. You purchase a car that will forever be known as the Car Craft Dart Games car, so you really can't personalize it. The pressure is on to preserve it just as the magazine originally built it, and you know that if you don't do a decent job, the critics will be all over you that you didn't do it right. It's a burden that many enthusiasts would never want to take on.

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Because we sponsored the original build, we can also say that Jim did the job right. Apparently, he knows how muscle-car restorations work because he also owns a Bloomington Gold Corvette. In this case, the task of restoring the body fell to Cross Autobody in Edwardsville, which performed all the bodywork and then laid down the custom B5 blue paint. Denny's Upholstery in Bethalto, Illinois, performed the bright-blue resto interior stitching. The final point was the engine, which again was easy from the standpoint that only stock-type replacement pieces would satisfy the resto requirement. You would think that Car Craft would want to build a thumper motor to satisfy all those inner horsepower cravings. But the reality of the day was that Petersen Publishing rules would not allow us to give away a modified car, so we had to restore the Dart as close to factory specs as possible. But because the muscle-car resto movement was at that time really gaining momentum, it was an easy decision to make.

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Those knowledgeable in all things Dart already know that its 340 engine was originally underrated by Chrysler at a mere 275 hp. When Bob Lambeck was finished with the engine, he had increased that power level to 315 hp, using the stock intake and headers. In the original story in the Apr. 1985 issue, our good friend, Louie Hammel, who just recently passed away after a long battle with leukemia, did the dyno testing at Edelbrock. All the subsequent resto work for Jim's version of the Dart came courtesy of The Parts Shop in Bethalto, Illinois.

Jim was gracious enough to give me a chance to cruise the restored Dart around the Du Quoin fairgrounds for a few minutes. I frankly don't recall driving the Dart when we first finished it, because it was probably finished the night before Chuck had to leave for his ill-fated cross-country cruise. The Dart today runs just like you'd expect from a 1960s muscle car with plenty of power from the 340 and twist from its 3.91:1 gears. There really wasn't anywhere safe to really WOT-test the Swinger, so I wasn't able to run it through the gears. That would have been fun, but that's not what this car is all about. It was more about revitalizing a little bit of Car Craft history and the knowledge that this car has survived the ravages of time. Too often, giveaway cars like these are abused and destroyed because the winner has nothing invested in the car. At least in this case, several people cared enough along the way to ensure the CC Dart survived. I like to think of it as a testament to how much our readers really care about cars and this magazine.

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Car Craft readers are the best!

TECH NOTESWho: Jim ShepardWhat: 1969 Dodge Dart Swinger 340

Engine: Unlike most engines in Car Craft, this one was intentionally built close to bone-stock. The Parts Shop in Bethalto, Illinois, did the machine work to restore this 340 in its latest refresh, but our original builder was Bob Lambeck, who took the originally 275hp 340 and tweaked the 10.5:1 compression motor with a bunch of parts from Perfect Circle. The prep included work on the "X" casting heads with 2.02-/1.60-inch stainless steel valves, better springs, and a Perfect Circle 268/274 advertised duration hydraulic flat-tappet cam with 0.430/0.440-inch lift. Lambeck topped the 340 off with a factory dual-plane intake, and we managed to scrounge an original equipment replacement Carter AVS four-barrel carburetor to complete the buildup. Jim now estimates the power at around 340 hp.

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Transmission/Rearend: Marvin Booth originally built the 727 TorqueFlite trans, but through no fault of his, the trans let go in the mountains of Colorado and a rebuilt version took over from there and, as far as we know, is still in the car. Dart 340 cars came with an 83⁄4-inch rear axle, and this one with the optional 3.91:1 gears and limited slip, which we retained. This made Chucks' trip even more painful since there was no overdrive transmission. Jim has faithfully retained all of the same components.

Suspension: The A-body Mopars were all unibody cars with torsion bars in the front and leaf springs in the rear. Other than new suspension bushings and ball joints, and a few other replacement goodies, the suspension remains as father Mopar intended.

Brakes: Stock Darts came with front disc brakes that measured 11 inches in diameter, followed up with a smallish 9-inch rear drum brake.

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Wheels/Tires: It might be hard to believe, but there was a time when production muscle cars came direct from the factory with 5.5-inch-wide by 14-inch-diameter wheels. Even more amazing is that Jim was still able to buy a set of 225/70R14 BFGoodrich Radial T/A tires.

Acknowledgements: We have to have the last word here to say thank you to Jim Shepard for taking on such a major task. They say actions speak louder than words, and Jim's excellent effort speaks volumes. Thanks, Jim, for restoring a piece of CC history!